Follow the money. Watch the rankings.
The Opportunity Scholarship has grown 9.0x in five years. While that was happening, NC's teacher pay ranking dropped 10 spots and the state landed dead last in per-pupil funding effort. Here's what the trend lines actually look like, side by side.
Voucher funding, by year
From $48M in 2019–20 to $432M in 2024–25. That's 9.0x growth in five years. The 2025–26 estimate is NC's own budget allocation.
Meanwhile, NC's public schools keep slipping
NC's average teacher pay rank fell from #33 to #43 over the same period voucher spending grew 9.0x. That's ten states' worth of downward movement. And teacher pay is the good number.
Religious vs. not
79% of every voucher dollar since 2019–20 has gone to a school with a religious affiliation. The school split is 67% religious. So religious schools are over-represented in where the money actually lands.
Tuition, grouped
The voucher amount is $7,942. 61 schools charge within 10% of that number.
206 of 394 schools with known tuition charge at or below the Tier-1 voucher. For the 65 schools charging $15,000 or more, the voucher covers less than half of tuition. The rest comes from families. (343 schools haven't published a tuition number.)
If you live here, what 'choice' are we talking about?
"School choice" only works if there's a school to choose. 13 of NC's 100 counties have zero voucher-taking schools. Another 9 have exactly one. For 40 counties, the menu has two items or fewer.
Davie County's single voucher-taking school has collected $50,038 in six years. Wake County, by contrast, has pulled in $73.8M... that's 1,475x more. Same state. Same program.
A note on what "zero schools" means: these counts reflect schools that actually accepted Opportunity Scholarship vouchers (2019–20 through 2024–25). A county might have private schools that simply don't participate in the program. Either way, if you live in one of the 13 zero-school counties, the voucher isn't buying you a seat anywhere nearby.
Who's actually using the voucher?
In 2024–25, 91.6% of Opportunity Scholarship recipients were already enrolled in private school the year before. The voucher wasn't how they got in.
The program was pitched as a way for public-school families to access private options they couldn't otherwise afford. The most recent pipeline data shows something different. Of roughly 80,000 voucher recipients in 2024–25, only about 8% transferred in from a public school. The rest were already paying private tuition.
Where the schools and the dollars concentrate. Useful for lookup, not part of the story above.